Glass Cannon Network has been a reputation within the tabletop roleplaying recreation precise play house since 2015, appearing as one of many first main channels in an area that is barely 10 years outdated. In keeping with Glass Cannon Network co-founder Troy Lavallee, a giant a part of that success comes down to at least one resolution: avoiding Dungeons & Dragons.
“[GCN] began out as ‘Let’s simply play [Pathfinder,] the sport that we all know and the sport that we love, as a result of if we’re infectious about how a lot we take pleasure in this recreation, listeners–whether they even play the sport or not, [will listen],” Lavallee informed me over a video name.
“We’re at all times shocked by how many individuals hear who’ve no real interest in ever enjoying,” he continued. “If we will share our infectious pleasure of enjoying, folks will feed off of that, and that is what they hear for. After which it wasn’t till the pandemic [in 2020] that we had been like, ‘I’m wondering if we might lastly begin enjoying different video games,’ as a result of we noticed that everybody else within the house was just about simply enjoying D&D. There have been a few offshoot issues right here or there, however it was [mostly] D&D, after which we had been enjoying Pathfinder. I stated, ‘Let’s begin enjoying every part else.'”
And whereas no precise play has really performed “every part else,” GCN has performed loads. From Blades within the Darkish to Traveller, and Shadowdark to Dune RPG, GCN has a ton of various exhibits, that includes each long-term campaigns and transient facet quest tales, that cowl quite a lot of playstyles, genres, and tones.
“That turned our factor to separate us from everyone else,” Lavallee stated. “If this group does D&D and this [other] group does Pathfinder, we do every part else.”
This is not to say that different main precise play exhibits do not diversify their content material. Simply wanting on the two most well-known channels within the house, Dimension 20 and Crucial Position, you will discover a wealth of genres and kinds of tales. However each channels primarily concentrate on enjoying D&D.
In an effort to extend the model consciousness of GCN, the community is taking its newest present on the street, performing reside in 9 cities by December. It is doing so with a TTRPG that, whereas nonetheless extra area of interest than D&D, has a reputation that does not require data of TTRPGs to have an concept of what it is about: Name of Cthulhu.
“There are such a lot of extra folks doing [actual play podcasts], and we’re very lucky to be one of many teams that individuals actually speak about,” Lavallee stated. “However nonetheless, the hole between us and those on high is very large. And so, even for folks in our place, it is a fixed battle to realize awareness–the folks which are forward of us [are] supremely gifted, and likewise had big followings and massive corporations behind them with tens of millions and tens of millions of {dollars} to face out. These days, in opposition to that, it is subsequent to not possible. So, I am simply actually excited for hopefully an increasing number of folks to study who we’re. Whereas they might not know Glass Cannon or Name of Cthulhu, they [at least] know Lovecraft.”
Name of Cthulhu is a recreation during which gamers do not actually win in a conventional sense. It is a cosmic horror TTRPG, primarily based on the tales of creator H.P. Lovecraft, that places emphasis on survival and sustaining one’s sanity–players tackle the position of investigators who should uncover learn how to escape no matter unknowable menace they’ve stumbled upon. With the correct Recreation Grasp and a gaggle of gamers keen to purchase into the fantasy, it is a terrifying recreation to play. However enjoyable! Like enjoying a survival-horror recreation.
“There may very well be a [total party kill] on night time one,” Lavallee stated, who’s the Recreation Grasp for GCN’s Name of Cthulhu Dwell. “It’s going to be all-new characters on [the next] present, or there may very well be two or three characters that survive that come again the subsequent night time or come again later within the 12 months in Indianapolis at GenCon. So it’s going to be actually attention-grabbing as new characters are cycled out and in, and outdated characters that go insane would possibly want three months off to go to a sanitarium or go into remedy to get their sanity again.”
When you need not attend earlier exhibits of Name of Cthulhu Dwell to know future exhibits, there will probably be a bit little bit of connective tissue between all of the performances, which can rotate their casts of characters as participant characters die and the tour strikes on to different cities.
“Initially, there was an idea that [the Call of Cthulhu Live player characters] all belong to this form of authorities company that goes out and investigates the supernatural,” Lavallee stated. “However what’s so nice about Name of Cthulhu is that the very best video games are when the characters aren’t heroes. They’re like a cashier or a radio DJ, after which, abruptly, they arrive collectively and must face the unnatural. So I [told the players,] you could be from any stroll of life–in reality, the extra random, the higher. And a number of the issues they’ve despatched me are loopy.
In keeping with Lavallee, the gamers in Name of Cthulhu Dwell are all creating characters who skilled one thing unusual growing–an occasion or phenomenon that they have been unable to elucidate with logic or totally write off as a trick of the thoughts. When the viewers meets a brand new group of characters throughout every cease of the tour, that makeshift squad has been requested by some clandestine group to analyze one thing or somebody, and this mission supplies a couple of solutions as to what occurred to these explicit characters after they had been youthful.
Tickets for Call of Cthuhu Live are nonetheless out there should you’re all in favour of attending a present. And if the tour is not displaying up close to you, however you continue to wish to watch a GCN precise play that offers with investigators wanting into Lovecraftian horror mysteries, try Get in the Trunk–it makes use of the Delta Inexperienced system, and there are seven spooky seasons to take heed to.